Jon Lord, Deep Purple’s keyboard player, has passed away.

It all began with Deep Purple for me; I listened to various tracks back in my teens and this paved the way for my obsession with Hendrix, Zeppelin and the Spice Girls.  The latter may or may not be true.

My Grandfather instilled a huge love of JS Bach into me with his classical influences and I loved how Jon Lord fused classical movements using a Lesley/Hammond organ combo into songs like ‘Child in Time’ and ‘Highway Star’.

Holy fuck, those two tracks STILL blow my mind and are regularly played at an irresponsible volume in my car!

How anyone can listen to the intro of ‘Highway Star’ and not say ‘dun dun dun dun dun!’ in time to the opening riff is beyond me!?!?!

The thing about having retro music tastes is that the artists are pretty much already dead, mad or in their twilight years, however it was still a ‘shock’ to see that Jon Lord had passed away.

I can only say that it made me a little sad because it reminded me of a much simpler time in my life and one when I was probably most creative, that said, I couldn’t hold a candle to the talents of Mr Lord if I lived several lifetimes!

Rest in Peace Jon, you absolutely legend!